2 Minnesota Lawmakers Accused of Sexual Harassment Step Down

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/21/us/minnesota-cornish-schoen.html

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Two state legislators in Minnesota are stepping down in response to harassment allegations amid a national wave of politicians, journalists and entertainers being accused of sexual misconduct.

Representative Tony Cornish, a Republican, and Senator Dan Schoen, a Democrat, announced their resignations on Tuesday after each was accused of harassing multiple women involved in state politics. Mr. Cornish, 66, is an eight-term representative from southern Minnesota, and Mr. Schoen, 42, is a first-term senator whose district is southeast of St. Paul.

Mr. Cornish on Tuesday reached a settlement with a lobbyist, Sarah Walker, who said Mr. Cornish had harassed her for years, pressuring her to have sex with him and, at one point, pushing her against the wall of his office.

Separately, State Representative Erin Maye Quade shared text messages with The Star Tribune, of Minneapolis, in which Mr. Cornish told her he had been “busted for staring at you on the House floor.”

“Haha,” Mr. Cornish wrote. “I told him it was your fault, of course. Look too damned good.”

Mr. Cornish initially denied most of the allegations, though he did acknowledge the texts to Ms. Maye Quade. But as part of the settlement reached with Ms. Walker, he agreed to resign by Dec. 1, to publicly apologize and to pay Ms. Walker’s legal fees, her lawyer, Scott Flaherty, confirmed. Ms. Walker will receive no money from the settlement.

“Her primary goal was removing him from office,” Mr. Flaherty said, “and that’s happened, or will happen shortly.”

Mr. Cornish, who did not immediately respond to an email from The New York Times on Tuesday, apologized in an earlier statement for his “unwelcome behavior.” “As a proud former peace officer and longtime champion for public safety, I am forced to face the reality that I have made some at the Capitol feel uncomfortable and disrespected,” he wrote.

In contrast, Mr. Schoen continues to deny the allegations against him.

In an investigation published this month, MinnPost reported that, among other things, Mr. Schoen had sent one woman a photo of a penis and grabbed another woman from behind.

His lawyer, Paul Rogosheske, told The Star Tribune that Mr. Schoen — a member of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, the state’s equivalent of the national Democratic Party — would release evidence of his innocence on Wednesday. Nonetheless, he is resigning because he “doesn’t feel he can be effective anymore” and “doesn’t want to work in an environment like this,” said Mr. Rogosheske, who did not immediately respond to a request for further information.

At an event in 2015, said Lindsey Port, a legislative candidate at the time, Mr. Schoen told her: “I can tell when a candidate is doing a good job knocking on doors by checking out their ass. Yep, looks like you’re doing a good job.” Later, Ms. Port said, he grabbed her buttocks and said, “Yep, yep, that’s a good door-knocking ass.”

Mr. Schoen told MinnPost that he was sorry “if any of my actions or words have ever made another person feel uncomfortable or harassed,” but that the allegations were “either completely false or have been taken far out of context.”

“It was never my intention to leave the impression I was making an inappropriate advance on anyone,” he said. “I feel terrible that someone may have a different interpretation of an encounter, but that is the absolute truth. I also unequivocally deny that I ever made inappropriate contact with anyone.”

Ms. Port said in a statement on Tuesday, “It brings me no joy to see Senator Schoen resign, but it does bring relief to see that we can hold people responsible.” She added that she hoped the movement would not “end with a few resignations, but with a renewed commitment to stand together and say, ‘No more.’”

In bringing behavior unseen or ignored for decades into view, the burst of conversation about sexual harassment and assault has toppled public figures across the nation, from the sets of Hollywood to the halls of government. Lawmakers in numerous states have been felled by allegations in recent weeks.

All of this, Ms. Walker said, is “the beginning of a conversation that needs to continue to happen in state capitols across the country.”

Women, she noted, have always known that sexual harassment in the workplace is common. But now they are seeing abusers held accountable in a new way, which encourages more women to speak up.

“I definitely feel like we’re in a cultural revolution around sex in the workplace,” Ms. Walker said. “But while the appearance seems sudden, it’s been a long-simmering issue right under the surface for many years.”